This is terrific. Dallas Taylor, the host of the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, learns the origin story of Netflix's "ta-dum" sound (aka "sonic logo") from its creators.
Mashable:
In an episode dedicated solely to this sound, Netflix VP of Product Todd Yellin starts out by revealing that it's actually called "ta-dum" internally. Yellin is a former filmmaker with an affinity for sound design, and he led the process of creating the ta-dum: Something immediately sonically tied to the experience of watching Netflix.
...Yellin enlisted Academy Award-winning sound designer Lon Bender for the project, giving him descriptors that conceptualize this sound: Tension, release, quirky, and more. Bender came up with 20-30 sound effects in different styles. For a long time, the frontrunner was close to the current ta-dum, but also included a goat noise.
(Digg)
image via Twenty Thousand Hertz Read the rest
"America's #1 lubricant brand" K-Y has a new look. Intentionally designed to represent a vulva, the brand's new logo is described as follows by its creator, Design Bridge New York:
A strong symbol of female sexual power was placed right at the heart of the new brand identity – the ruby. Framed perfectly by the newly crafted K & Y, the ruby is a celebration of the vulva and a symbol of uncompromising passion and enjoyment. This new, unapologetic distinctive asset transforms across touchpoints to talk to the different forms of sexual pleasure that the brand wants to encourage.
Claire Parker, Executive Creative Director at Design Bridge New York, explained, “We’ve unleashed a distinctive brand asset that was always there, it just never had any strength or purpose. By making it intentional, we’ve loaded it with meaning and brought a sensuality and confidence to the brand that was lacking before. An enormous step for a brand that was previously at best asexual, at worst clinical.”
The Design Bridge team came up with the simple yet powerful creative idea of “Let’s talk about sex”, and were inspired by the brand’s curious and sensual, yet uncompromising and expert new personality. With the vulva now so clearly celebrated at the heart of the brand, the surrounding brand world and assets were developed to further normalize female pleasure and build confidence between the sheets.
On pack, bespoke typography and iconography bring this creative idea and personality to life through playful, conversational messaging about each product, which in turn helps women to find the right product for them.
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I never know where our conversations are going to go when I get together with my friend Mark of Cardhouse. His tastes are more esoteric than the average person and I'm always surprised and amused by what he shares with me.
So, we had lunch Wednesday. Somehow Dunkin' Donuts came up. He asked me if I had remembered when he posted about Donkey Donald's (in 2013). I hadn't. He explained.
He cited a Tumblr written by two NYC concierges in which they shared funny stories about their job. The blog is called how may we hate you? and their "Donkey Donald's" story is as follows:
Then he tells me that, back in 2013, he reworked the Dunkin' Donuts logo to become, of course, the Donkey Donald's logo (lead image).
Then he says when Dunkin' Donuts changed its name to simply Dunkin' recently, he updated his Donkey Donald's logo to simply Donkey (because, of course):
Talk about playing the logo long game! Read the rest
Mitchel Resnick is one of the most humane, accomplished and prolific creators of educational technology in the world, one of the co-creators of Logo and Lego Mindstorms, and founder the MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten group, where the open source, kid-friendly, open-ended Scratch software development tool was born; in a new book (
also called "Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play") Resnick analyzes the extraordinary successes that have emerged from his kid-centered view of learning with technology, sketching out a future in which kids program their classroom computers, not the other way around.
If an artificial intelligence reviewed your favorite logo, how would that logo fare? now you can find out with Logo Rank, a nifty tool by the guy behind Brandmark. Read the rest
Design firm Dorothy created an alphabet made up entirely of letters from classic rock band logos. I did OK on this one, but the alternative rock one kicked my butt: Read the rest
Flagging computer company HP hasn't had a great decade, but for the new Spectre laptop it reintroduced a daring minimalist logo that's been spotted once or twice before, but is only now hitting products. Everyone loves it! So do I.
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The new logo, announced yesterday, is undoubtedly more pleasant and contemporary than the old one. Margaret Rhodes writes that the company wants you to think that it is your go-everywhere friend.
Google needs to be able to transform its brand at will, because its canon of products is expanding rapidly. It’s not just that users now engage with the company on a “constellation of devices,” as the authors of the logo announcement page put it. As we saw at the I/O developer conference, Google is pushing to seamlessly guide users from one product to the next, with things like Google Now on Tap and voice search as the connective tissue that will bring it all together. For that to work, Google needs a crisp visual system. The new design helps, Clinton says, because the typeface is based largely on circles.
Glenn Fleishman writes that these simple scalable logos are simply bland.
At first glance, it seemed exceedingly bland to me; the longer I look at it and a new font that's related, the more I think they made a series of good choices. It's still bland, but it's a well-thought-out bland that makes sense for their company.
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Snapped yesterday near my flat in east London, this Irish shredding company's logo on the back of their truck. Talk about "does what it says on the tin!"
Awesome logo on hard-drive-shredding service's lorry, Brunswick Place, Hackney, London, UK Read the rest
